Icon Appearance

[Guest]

I'm running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 Installed. It has
been fine for several months now. The only major things I've done with my
system, recently, were: (1) I installed a new hard-drive as my boot drive,
and the transfer of the OS and all software and files seemed to go smoothly,
and (2) I installed Mozilla Firefox as my browser of choice.

Recently, I've noticed that alot of my shortcut icons and file icons have
changed to the default unknown Windows format. For example, if I look at the
icon for a Microsoft Word document, the file name is visible but instead of
having the "W" icon next to it, it has that Windows 3.x icon instead. This is
the case for all of my Office documents, as well as my Acrobat documents, and
the Start Menu shortcuts for all of my Microsoft and Adobe software. Any
ideas what might be going on? Is this Microsoft's way of telling me that they
don't want me to use Mozilla on this machine? Or did I overzealously going
into Local Settings and clean house? Thanks - Jeff

 

[Alias]

I'm running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 Installed. It has
been fine for several months now. The only major things I've done with my
system, recently, were: (1) I installed a new hard-drive as my boot drive,
and the transfer of the OS and all software and files seemed to go smoothly,
and (2) I installed Mozilla Firefox as my browser of choice.

Recently, I've noticed that alot of my shortcut icons and file icons have
changed to the default unknown Windows format. For example, if I look at the
icon for a Microsoft Word document, the file name is visible but instead of
having the "W" icon next to it, it has that Windows 3.x icon instead. This is
the case for all of my Office documents, as well as my Acrobat documents, and
the Start Menu shortcuts for all of my Microsoft and Adobe software. Any
ideas what might be going on? Is this Microsoft's way of telling me that they
don't want me to use Mozilla on this machine? Or did I overzealously going
into Local Settings and clean house? Thanks - Jeff

I don't know the answer except to say Firefox had nothing to do with it.

Alias

 

[frodo]

if you have TweakUI, the repair section has a "rebuild icons" option; try
it.

 

[Guest]

Follow this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Download the PowerToy called TweakUI from the link above. After you have
installed it, run it and you should see a "Repair" option at the bottom of
the list on the left hand side of the main window. Click on repair, select
"rebuild icons" from the drop down list, and then click the "repair" button.
See if that works....

 

[Guest]

Thanks for replying BrianB and Alias. I tried installing using the TweakUI
tool and that didn't do it either. I don't know...I suspect that somewhere
along the way I may have hit a control that affects file associations and the
icon types that are assigned to files.

Any other ideas from anyone? Thanks - Jeff

 

[Guest]

Thanks for replying BrianB and Alias. I tried installing using the TweakUI
tool and that didn't do it either.

You did try the Repair - Rebuild Icons in TweakUI, right?

I don't know...I suspect that somewhere
along the way I may have hit a control that affects file associations and the
icon types that are assigned to files.

Pretty sure that Firefox didn't have anything to do with it. I've installed
it on many machines and never seen your problem.

I might be wrong, but I don't think there is a separate association for
icons, only for file types -> programs.

Are you saying that the programs do open the files and the only problem is
that the correct icons are not showing with the files?

If so, try this - My Computer - Tools - Folder Options - File Types and find
the 'doc' extension in the list. Hightlight it and click on Advanced - Change
Icon, pick the one you want and click OK all the way out. If that works, you
can also do it for folders and other file extensions.

 

[Guest]

Thanks folks. I installed and ran TweakUI for the "Rebuild Icons" function.
No change.

wyocowboy, you are correct. Everything opens fine, and the correct programs
open the files that I select. The only issue is one of aesthetics, in that
the correct icons do not appear next to the file names. I also tried going
into My Computer/Tools/Folder Options to update the application associations
and that has had no effect. Any other possibilities?

 

[Bob I]

Delete the "IconCache.db" file from

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data
folder and let the system rebuild it.

 

[frodo]

Double check your display properties, is color depth set at 16 bits or
less? For the nex xp icons to be used it should be set to 32.

check kelly's site, there are several fixes there for icon issues.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

 

[Guest]

Thanks folks. I installed and ran TweakUI for the "Rebuild Icons" function.
No change.

wyocowboy, you are correct. Everything opens fine, and the correct programs
open the files that I select. The only issue is one of aesthetics, in that
the correct icons do not appear next to the file names. I also tried going
into My Computer/Tools/Folder Options to update the application associations
and that has had no effect.

If you go back and read my post, I was instructing you to change the icon
associations, not the application associations. What happened when you tried
to change the icon associations?

 

[Guest]

Okay, a little bit of progress here. I deleted IconCache.db and let Windows
rebuild it. No change, problem remains. Tried Kelly's Corner, and tried a
couple of items, and still no dice. But, I went back and followed wyocowboy's
recommendation and this time I did the Change Icon routine correctly.
However, I got the following error message from Windows:

Windows cannot find the file
C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{00010409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}\wordicon.exe

Same applies for Excel, Publisher, etc. I went to C:\WINDOWS and guess what:
No Installer folder is present. Now what do I do? Repair the installation of
XP with my CD?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[Guest]

Just so everyone knows, I managed to fix this little issue. I used my MS
Office CDs to repair the installation of the different Office programs, which
re-established the icon associations and replaced the icon.exe files that
were missing. I also re-installed Acrobat, which had the same effect.
Everything seems to be working fine now. Not sure how it all happened, but
somehow I lost access to everything that needed to be there for the icons to
associate with the files properly.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Cheers - Jeff

 

[Guest]

Okay, a little bit of progress here. I deleted IconCache.db and let Windows
rebuild it. No change, problem remains. Tried Kelly's Corner, and tried a
couple of items, and still no dice. But, I went back and followed wyocowboy's
recommendation and this time I did the Change Icon routine correctly.
However, I got the following error message from Windows:

Windows cannot find the file
C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{00010409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}\wordicon.exe

Same applies for Excel, Publisher, etc. I went to C:\WINDOWS and guess what:
No Installer folder is present. Now what do I do? Repair the installation of
XP with my CD?

Ah, now we are getting somewhere...

First off, the c:\windows\installer folder is hidden by default. In order to
see it, go My Computer - Tools - Folder Options - View and click on "show
hidden files and folders." While you are in there, also clear the check marks
on "hide extensions for known file types" and "hide protected operating
system files" (you will probably want to set these back to their defaults
when done...)

Now see if c:\windows\installer and its sub-folders show up. Find the one
referenced in the error message. My guess is that it is missing, or the
wordicon.exe file is missing. If it is, and if the only icons that are goofed
up are associated with MS Office, I would run a repair installation of
Office, not XP. The alternative would be to copy the wordicon.exe,
excelicon.exe, etc from another machine running the same version of Office.

On the other hand, you had said that the file folder icons did not look
correct either. Did you try the Change Icon routine with the file folder?

 

[Guest]

Only just found this. Posted exactly the same problem today (4th March, 06)
under Configuration and Management. Did you ever get it resolved?